Gossip Girl: Season 1

Watchdog groups, parents, and young viewers are in a tizzy over Gossip Girl, because season 1 was so bad (by which we mean campy and naughty), it was good. It’s not the air of materialistic high-society snobbery that irks parents, it’s the fear that their own kids could be tasting the forbidden fruits of their youth: booze, drugs, and lots of sex. Even if teens are copying villainess Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) and her couture-clad posse, the backstabbing and resulting schadenfreude are so addictive you can’t blame them for watching. EXTRAS include an audiobook of the first GG novel (the series’ inspiration), read by Christina Ricci. A-